Back to the Future - - > Part IV
by Limpstylegeetarz
Summary: What if...


Introduction: Alternate Ending to Part II ****

Introduction: Alternate Ending to Part II

___________________________________________________________________________________________

The Delorean shook from side to side as it came closer to the road. The winds swallowed it up into the sky and Doc Brown felt the full force of the historic thunderstorm. Doc gulped between steering the flying car, and shouting to Marty through his crackling walkie-talkie.   
"Have you got the book?" He cried out hopefully.   
Marty shouted back to him from the road below in return.   
"In my hands Doc, I got in my hands." Marty held it up in the darkness of the evening, though he doubted Doc could see it. He fell to his knees, reaching for the pack of matches in his pocket when he heard his hysterical friend blurt out his instructions. "BURN IT!" He told Marty. Marty's hoverboard whirred from where it sat under a pillow of air, next to him. As the lightening struck all around him, Marty lit a match from the "Biff's" brand box of matches in his hand.   
This had to be it. If he set this magazine alight, then it would change his future. It would save his father from a premature death, at the mercy of Biff Tannen. Tannen, the high school bully who had gotten the sports almanac from the future, the almanac that had told him every sports result he needed to win billions from every horse race and football match for the next 45 years. If he burnt this book, then he wouldn't make those bets, that had changed his life and all of his family's life into hell.   
This match he held in his hands would make everything better, back to normal like he and Doc had being trying to do all day. Now this match was going to save his life.   
  
"Drop it butthead," came Biff's all too familiar gruff voice from behind him. Marty gasped and dropped the almanac, and dropped the cigarette into the tin can next to him, where it quickly died out.   
"Can't be…" Marty gasped and shook from the cold and the fear. He heard Biff's laughter from behind him. It wasn't the younger Biff, the 1955 Biff that he'd just left at the bottom of the cargo of a manure truck. It wasn't old Biff, from the future, 2015, the voice was too young. It was the Biff in the middle, the Biff from 1985. But how? Without thinking Marty quickly turned to face the gunman, who's laughter ended, with the trigger of his gun being pulled.   
"Drop it!" Came Doc's voice came from behind Biff, behind Marty. Biff turned around, just as Marty did. Doc held a handgun that he'd owned in 1985.   
"Doc Brown. I never thought I'd have the honour." He pulled the trigger. "NO!" Marty leapt onto his back, struggling for the gun. Doc had dodged the bullet by a second. Now, Biff was going to shoot Marty. Doc unconsciously squeezed the trigger, and Biff was fell to the ground.   
Biff looked up as a tree nearby on the other side of the road was struck by a lightening bolt and thrown to the road Doc stood on. He jumped at the sound of it behind him and then spoke to Marty, jumpily. "We're gonna have to take this guy to a hospital to save his life, Marty. We can't leave two Biffs in 1955." His face was crinkled up, as if he might even cry. Marty nodded and kneeled down to Biff, who was still alive. "The future…" he cried out in pain, and then closed his eyes. Marty anxiously checked his pulse. "He's dead." He said slowly.   
"Doc don't tell me you've been carrying that around through time with us?" He said. Doc gave him a solemn grin. "Well I saw Tannen so I somehow flew the Delorean through these winds at 88, got my gun from 1985 and came back here a minute early. I guess it paid off," he shrugged. Marty thought this over.   
"Wait," he said to his friend. "Doc, I don't think this should have happened!" Doc shook his head. "I didn't know what to do. This is your Biff, so his death won't change your future, but it could still have done some major damage to your kids." Marty shrugged. "My kids? I thought we sorted all that out? So what, at least Jr won't get picked on by Griff so much?"   
Doc shook his head. "I've seen some stuff Marty. He could have made a difference to what I saw. Maybe Griff made fun of Jr, who said something about Griff that inspired somebody else to tell a teacher or parent, who passed on word to someone who was gonna crack down on bullying in schools, who decided to start a movement that affected an ancestor of-" Marty interrupted him.   
"Alright Doc, but what does this all mean?"   
"This could change the future!" Doc finished with his hands on his waist. "In ways that may not affect us, in ways that we may never know, now, because of this event. Biff is now never going to be around for his son to be born, which means that all of that is going to change." Doc realised he was still holding the smoking gun. "Not to mention I have just killed a man, I don't know how this will get to me."   
A bolt of lightening suddenly struck the road near the tree, which made Doc jump again. "Great Scott!" He said. "That lightening could have hit me! If I hadn't gotten control of the Delorean in time to put her down when I saw Biff, I could've been trapped by the wind, and hit by lightening! Now how about that!"   
Marty nodded, gaping for breath. He looked down at Biff's corpse. It was fading away. Marty put his hand right through his head, and felt nothing at all. Doc was looking over at the patch of road that was smoking from the lightening. "Unbelievable," he said with an astonished, grim glare. The realisation that he was a murderer had only just sunk in.   
"DOC!" Marty shouted out to him. "Biff's fading!" He looked at Doc Brown, wide-eyed. Doc staggered and clutched his chest. "Marty something's wrong, I don't think I should have shot him!" By now Biff had completely disappeared.   
Marty stood up and walked over to him.   
"I think you were right about that lightening bolt." He gulped. "This is heavy, Doc." Doc stood with a gaping open mouth.   
"Do you know what this means Marty?" He said to his friend. "What?" Marty let out a heavy breath.   
"We have to go back in time to find out how the hell Biff got here!" He said. "Wait, no, now that he's disappeared probably means that he was never even here!" Marty gave him an exasperated look. "We have to go back five minutes and stop him from pulling a gun to your head!" He corrected himself. "I don't know what, but something important was meant to come of all of this, and without Biff's body then we can't know that it went through. We have to stop our past selves from making that mistake and then we have to get the hell outta here!"   
  
Doc and Marty sat in the Delorean with their eyes on the dial. They needed to hit 88 mph before they could reach their destination, 5 minutes earlier than where they were. "You know," Marty spoke up. "Now that Biff is dead, all of the work we did to keep my son out of trouble with Griff is for nothing?" He tried to smile, but he didn't succeed. Doc never even looked up at him, but kept his eyes on the skies. "Not in 5 minutes, we're gonna go back to the moment Biff turns up, and take him out of there."   
Marty thought about the plan doubtfully. "But if he faded away then how… Well what about paradoxes then? We can't look at ourselves, so if we do, then that could seriously screw up the, ah, space time continuum, right?"   
Doc bit his lip, and shrugged his shoulders.   
"Marty, this is a gamble, when exactly we're going right now, but I figure it must have been somewhere between 3 to 5 minutes ago, when Biff turned up. I'm guessing if we interrupt him from reaching us, then we can give ourselves enough time to get out of here, and find out something to do with where he came from and where he's going."   
Before he could say another word, a spark flew out ahead of them. "Here we go!" He said, as they disappeared into the night.   
  
The Delorean shook from side to side as it came closer to the road. The winds swallowed it up into the sky and Doc Brown felt the full force of the historic thunderstorm. Doc gulped between steering the flying car, and shouting to Marty through his crackling walkie-talkie.   
"Have you got the book?" He cried out hopefully.   
Marty shouted back to him from the road below in return.   
"In my hand Doc, I got in my hand." Marty held it up in the darkness of the evening, though he doubted Doc could see it. He fell to his knees, reaching for the box of matches in his pocket when he heard his hysterical friend blurt out his instructions. "BURN IT!" He told Marty. Marty's hoverboard whirred from where it sat under a pillow of air, next to him. As the lightening struck all around him, Marty lit a match from the "Biff's" brand box of matches in his hand.   
This had to be it. If he set this magazine alight, then it would change his future. It would save his father from a premature death, at the mercy of Biff Tannen. Tannen, the high school bully who had gotten the sports almanac from the future, the almanac that had told him every sports result he needed to win billions from every horse race and football match for the next 45 years. If he burnt this book, then he wouldn't make those bets, that had changed his life and all of his family's life into hell.   
This match he held in his hands would make everything better, back to normal like he and Doc had being trying to do all day. Now this match was going to save his life.   
  
Marty's hand began to shake, as he dropped it into a tin can sitting on the ground next to his hoverboard, where he had scrunched the Sports Almanac into. He watched it go up in flames. He breathed out a sigh of relief, which didn't last long.   
He needed proof that the nightmarish "Biff World" alternate 1985 was really gone for good. He pulled the packet of matches out of his pocket again and looked at the "Biff's" logo on the front. It was disappearing. It was being erased.   
"Auto Detailing", the label now read. Marty smiled, and pulled out the newspaper page he had ripped out and folded up into his jacket pocket. The headline that had once read "George McFly Murdered" now said "George McFly Honoured". Marty quickly skimmed the page. What had previously been written of Marty's father's unsolved death, was now replaced with a front page article about his father's first novel gaining popularity, and winning an award at the annual Hill Valley Book Fair!   
Marty felt faint with happiness. Everything was going back to normal, everything was being altered because of this one book! The book was gone, and now all the evidence of the nightmare that had been Biff's alternate 1985 was being erased! All because of that Almanac!   
"Doc, Doc ,The newspaper changed! Now my father's alive!" He shouted to Doc through the walkie-talkie.   
"He's ok," he said, overcome by relief.   
Up in the shaking Delorean, Doc replied with a happy voice.   
"That's right Marty, it's the ripple effect, now the future's back and we can go home!"   
  
"Of course!" Said Doc with glee. "The Delorean wasn't still up there, when Biff arrived and pulled the gun to your head! I landed it to help you, after I went back to 1985 for the gun! I landed it, so that I wasn't still suspending it up there!" He pointed, to illustrate his point. "Therefore, for some reason, it's not going to be somewhere or other by a certain point in time, therefore he can't steal the Delorean, which I'm assuming is what he did, and bring it back here! THAT is why he faded away before! Where exactly it had to be at that point in time, and why my landing the Delorean made any difference to how, where and when he would steal it I don't know, but anyway, now our job is done! We can go home!"   
The two of them stood peering out at past Marty, who was now standing on the road looking up at past Doc in the Delorean, still in the air where it was before, interacting through walkie-talkies. They stood behind the billboard they knew all too well, where they had hidden the Delorean many a time before. That's where they hid it now, as they watched they're past selves, and what they might do next.   
"Wait, Doc," Marty stopped him before he got into the Delorean, with an unconscious Biff in the back seat. "Can't we just stick around for a minute, I want to see if this big event is gonna take place!" Doc shook his head, but he couldn't hide his grin. He hadn't killed a man! He had gone back in time and changed Biff's fate! He felt proud of himself, he had no reason to feel bad about Biff any more. They would just take him back to 1985 unconscious.   
"Look Marty, we don't want to risk screwing up any more future events more than we already have, it's just too dangerous. I've gotta get rid of this infernal machine, the world isn't ready for this invention. Time will never be ready for a time traveller! It's too risky, it's already proven disastrous. Besides, you only wanna look at yourself some more don't you?" He finished with a grin.   
They were interrupted by the tree being struck by lightening again, like it had when Doc had shot Biff, and then jumped at the sound of it behind him. Marty realised he had been standing on the road. "Geez, am I alright?" He looked past the billboard, to see that he was fine, the tree had easily missed him.   
Marty suddenly remembered the lightening strikes. "Doc, remember your remark, about the lightening?" He asked him, bewildered. Doc was already filling in the destination they would travel to next.   
Doc nodded without listening. "Doc, seriously, what if you still get hit?"   
Doc stopped and turned towards the Delorean.   
  
Marty and Doc poked their heads out from behind the Lyon Estates billboard, staring up at the rocking, flying time machine, wary of past Marty, and careful to stay out of his sight. "Be careful," past Marty was saying into the walkie-talkie. "You don't wanna get struck by lightening!" At that moment sparks flew, Doc gasped, past Marty was thrown back onto the ground, and the past Delorean disappeared, leaving behind two flames, that soon faded away, as rain began to suddenly pour down.   
Doc stood back and pulled Marty with him. Careful to keep his voice at a whisper, he said, "I don't think I should have witnessed that!" Marty pushed him into the Delorean. They shut the doors to keep out the wild rain from outside.   
"I know you're always to first to start up about not knowing too much about your own future," Marty began. "But what or when are we? I mean, are we past of those guys, or the future of those guys? I mean, where do we stand in the time continuum now? I'm lost!" He said to Doc.   
Doc was holding his head in his hands. He couldn't shake the feeling that they were lost in time, that they were insignificant in time.   
"I'm lost too Marty, but all I can guess, is that we belong right now, in 1985. We have to go back there now, and hope that we don't bump into ourselves."   
"They'll be here though, won't they?" Marty asked.   
"Yeah, well we think that, but by the time we get back to 1985, they could have spent years and years in the future, or the past, and then set the coordinates for the day before they left. It's like they spend a lifetime outside of time, and step back in when they feel like it, so they'd still be in time for dinner! They only have to worry about aging!"   
"Geez, we're talking some serious jet lag here!" Marty murmured.   
In the back of the time machine, Biff gave a groan. "I'll give him some sleeping juice." Doc said, leaning back with his futuristic hand-held sleeping machine. "Just like Jennifer," he said, pointing to the machine. "When he eventually wakes up, he'll think it's all just a crazy dream."   
"But he knows some stuff that we don't," Marty said. Doc shrugged to him.   
"I guess he might forget about all of this, hopefully." Doc said.   
"But if that happens, then we won't be here now, stopping him from turning up here, now, before, I mean!" Marty hit his head in exasperation.   
"I know, I know, it's very complicated. "Look, let's just worry about getting home." He said, getting back to their destination coordinates.   
"I'm really worried about that lightening just now. I could have disappeared, or turned into sawdust or something, then I guess you would know that I'm either dead, or in another time, or something. I really have no idea what's going on now, I just wish I knew where or when -- I -- am right now." He gave Marty a puzzled look.   
At that moment headlights appeared in the rear vision mirror of the Delorean. "Someone's coming!" Doc said, turning the ignition off.   
  
A man rose from out of the 50s car. "Mr. McFly?" The man called out, from under a hat and overcoat. Past Marty looked back at him, soaked all through. "Huh?" He called back, confused. His best friend had just disappeared, and now there was somebody in the year 1955 that seemed to know him? What was going on?   
"Is your name Marty McFly?" The man asked from his car.   
"Yeah," Marty replied, warily. "I've got something for you," the man said, approaching him, and reaching inside his jacket.   
"A letter!" He handed it to him. "A letter for me? That's impossible…Who the hell are you?" Marty took it from the strange man, eager to open it and find out what was going on.   
"Western Union." He shouted over the storm. "Actually a bunch of us at the office were kind of hoping you could shed some light on the subject. See, we've had that envelope in our possession for the past 70 years!" The man said with a chuckle pointing to the letter Marty held in his hands.   
The man began to walk towards his car, where he pulled out his umbrella, with a form and a pen. He came back to shelter Marty, a bit too late. Marty was already wet through, from his hair, to his black leather jacket and blue jeans. He stood in front of him, with a gaping mouth and a confused expression on his face.   
"It was given to us," he said. "With explicit instructions that it be delivered to a young man fitting your description, answering to the name of Marty, at this exact location – at this exact minute – November 12, 1955. We had a little bet going as to whether this Marty would actually be here. Looks like I lost! Hahaha, hahaha!"   
The man was very light, and happy, joking about this whole matter, while Marty was still very much lost. It had to be Doc, it couldn't be anyone else. And the orders, being directed to the exact minute, at that exact location, couldn't be from anyone else. But where was he? WHEN was he, as he knew Doc would have corrected him?   
"Did you say 70 years?" Marty asked, slowly beginning to piece the puzzle together. "Yeah, 10 years, 2 months, uhh… 12 days to be exact!" The man from Western Union said, obviously very educated on the matter. He was probably even more curious than Marty as to what the letter said.   
"Sign on line six please," he said, holding out a form and pen he had picked up with the umbrella. "Here you are," he hurried Marty.   
Marty opened the letter and read a few lines out loud, under his breath. He got excited at seeing Doc's handwriting and read the letter in the rain for a moment, until he realised that it was getting wet, and sheltered it under the stranger's broad umbrella.   
"It's from the Doc!" He cried out, forgetting all about the man he was in company with. "1885! September 1885!" He stuffed the old letter into its envelope again, carelessly, and shoved it into his inside jacket pocket. Disorientated by all of the confusion and excitement, Marty rain out into the cold, wet night. The man from Western Union grabbed onto him and held him back by his car.   
"Hey kid, you need any help?" He shouted across to him, in the pelting rain.   
  
Doc and Marty watched past Marty run past the man from Western Union, yelling, "There's only one man who can help me now," as he ran through the pouring rain. "Where's he, I mean you, going?" Doc thought out loud, again hiding behind the billboard with Marty.   
"To find you." Marty answered him in reply. "The 1955 you." Doc looked at him, with a curious look on his face. "Well," Marty shrugged his shoulders. "Great minds think alike," he said with a grin.   
"Yeah well, we've gotta get out of here now, we can't hang around in this time any longer, we might bump someone by mistake, go back to 1985 just to find out that the person we bumped started a revolt against the -" He stopped.   
"That letter… I want to know where it is, what time I was sent to." He said.   
"1885 Doc! I thought you heard! He, uh I, shouted it out louder than… Well I think back in 1955, the clock tower striking 10:00, you know, might have damaged your hearing a little?" Marty said, out of breath. "But it was 1885!"   
Doc sat down in the Delorean again. "What was that? 1885?" He smiled.   
"Well, I never would have thought of that one when I was caught up in my futuristic adventures!" He slapped his forehead. "The Old West!" Doc shook his head in wonder and elation. "So I'm not dead. I must have left Marty that letter to Marty for 70 years! Amazing that Western Union would actually hold a letter for that long! I must have paid them a fair deal!"   
Marty sat down in the Delorean as the gull wing doors opened. Doc stood outside in the rain for a moment longer just to watch the confused young man from Western Union get into his car and drive away. He obviously hadn't gotten what he had expected, after working there with that "legendary" letter's date edging nearer. Doc wondered what his colleagues would say, when he came back empty handed?   
"Doc, like you said, we gotta get going!" Marty said, impatiently from the Delorean. Doc nodded, and sat down next to him in the car, with Biff snoring loudly in the back seat. "Let's set our destination at the next morning, ah… Sunday. Think of that Marty! After all this time that I've been tinkering with, with 1955, 2015… I've just lost track of what time it is in our real time… Come to think of it, it doesn't even matter! Wherever I go, I can be back before I left!"   
Marty nodded. "Whatever Doc, let's just get going, huh?" He asked, impatiently.   
"Sure," replied his white-haired friend. "We'll go back Sunday, that way we can drop Biff off late, he can wake up at home, uh, Jennifer and Einie will wake up Sunday… We can get you home, and you can assure your parents that you and Jennifer were out camping at…" He paused, fiddling with the time circuits, that were stopping and starting again. "The lake!" Marty finished. "What time?" Doc thought for a moment. "Ugh… 11:00? That'll do… Yeah, you just have to convince Jennifer that she overslept!" He lifted the car gently off the ground.   
"Perfect," said Marty. "There goes my weekend."   
The Delorean rose into the clouds of the already ending rain. They soon disappeared in a flame that lit up the dark sky, before vanishing into the night. 


End file.
